S P E E C 


OF 


HON. THOS. F. MARSHALL, 

\\ 

IN OPPOSITION TO TIIE PRINCIPLES OF THE 

KNOW-NOTHING ORGANIZATION. 


[Republished from the Kentucky Yeoman.] 

Versailles, June 24, 1855. 

Messrs. Editors: 

Thomas F. Marshall reached 
this village yesterday, about J2 o’clock. He 
had ridden twelve or fourteen miles through a 
hard rain, and was wet through his entire cloth¬ 
ing. At three o’clock he commenced his speech 
in the Court House, which was full of people, 
principally from the country. Fifteen or twen¬ 
ty ladies were in attendance. His voice was 
huskv and feeble, and his manner and whole 
person indicated fatigue and anxiety. He spoke 
more than three hours, and, at the close, de 
dared himself a candidate for Congress, by vir¬ 
tue of his own nomination, and as the represen¬ 
tative of his own ideas. He read the entire plat¬ 
form of the Philadelphia Convention, and ex 
pressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the 
resolutions in relation to slavery. He sifted the 
balance of the resolutions at great length. He 
seemed to thing it strange that the existence of 
the Deity, and his superintendence of the world 
should have been among Sam’s secrets. He had 
supposed these matters were extensively known, 
and generally received among men, before the 
advent of Young Sam. It was strange to him, 
that there should be a Protestant party in this 
country, bound together by an oath of secresy, 
under a thorough and complete organization, 
whose objects were political, owing allegiance 
to a government unknown to the constitution 
and the laws, with objects and with men con¬ 
cealed from all but the initiated. An imperium 
in imperio, seeking to grasp all power in this 
country, legislative and administrative, from a 
constable to the President of the United States. 

He looked around him upon a crowd of men, 
familiar to him all his life. He saw men who 
had been the tried men of his bosom—the com¬ 
panions of his heart—men who had stood by 


him in eVery variety of fortune, through good 
and evil report—men who had wrapped them 
selves about him, like the traveler’s cloak in the 
fable, to shield him and to shelter him -when the 
storm had raged the loddest and the fiercest, and 
these mCn, bound by an oath riot to reveal, even 
to him, the fact, the simple fact, that they were 
members of this order until the dispensing pow¬ 
er of the general council authorized the disclo¬ 
sure! The order, so far as he understood it, 
seemed an exact Copy of that Instituted by Ig 
natius Lhyola. Its objects Were univeisal em¬ 
pire. and the eatablishment of a religion by po¬ 
litical authority; Loyola’s Was Catholic; this 
was Protestant Jesuitism. Mr. M., argued at 
great length to prove, that popular institutions 
could not subsist Without entire publicity in po¬ 
litical transactions. 

He said, that Young Sam had promised a na¬ 
tional platform. He called his folks the “Ameri¬ 
can party.” In this he had failed signally. 
The convention at Philadelphia, were certainly 
know-nothings—all know nothings. There 
must have been some principles, common to the 
entire order, which united and made them one. 
These principles did not relate to slavery—on 
that point Sam broke into two. The party 
North were abolition; the party South held no 
principles upon thesubject peculiar to themselves 
—they held nothing that had not been avowed, 
aye, and acted on. by the national democracy for 
many years, and through fierce contests. What 
was it upon which Northern and Southern 
know-nofhingism agreed? What was the point 
of contact between them? Nothing that he 
could discover but the repeal of the naturaliza 
tion laws, and the imposition of political disa¬ 
bilities upon men of the Catholic communion, 
whether of American or foreign birth. Upon 
these points, Sam North and Sam South, white 
Sam and black Sam agreed. This was all his 





t. f. Marshall’s speech. 


rationality—this was all his Americanism.-— 
Mr. Marshall labored to show that these were 
anti-American ideas. He contended that reli¬ 
gious toleration and the right of expatriation 
were peculiar to this republic. That these were 
the features that distinguished our institutions 
from every form of polity—that had ever been 
known among men. He admitted that Sam 
could repeal the naturalization laws, by act of 
Congress, without violating the Federal Constitu¬ 
tion. Whether he should do so or not, was a 
matter of sound discretion and policy. Reli¬ 
gious liberty, however, in its largest and 
widest sense, was, he said, established by the 
Constitution. If Young Sam succeeded in his 
organization, it would be really and practically 
abridged. That, when a party had a particular 
object—a single idea, paramount to all others, 
the distinguishing feature of their system—all 
experience had shown, that whenever they ac¬ 
quired the political power, they carried this 
idea into legislation, and sought to make it per¬ 
manent by the sanctions of law. Catholic, disa¬ 
bilities was Sam’s leading object. His disciples 
were sworn never to vote for a Catholic for of¬ 
fice. Sam considered such unfitted by his reli¬ 
gion to hold office in a republican government. 
Sam considered thisrepublic as seriously endan¬ 
gered by the practical operation of that princi¬ 
ple in the Constitution,which declaies that ‘*no 
religious test shall ever be required as a quali 
fication to an y officeor public trust under theUni- 
nited States.’’ Sam sought to establish a reli¬ 
gious test. He cannot do so, permanently, 
without changing the Federal Constitution. If 
Sam gets the power he will be inconsistent and 
stupid, unless he grafts upon the Constitution, 
and makes a part of the fundamental law, his 
great idea— the idea upon which “Protestant 
civilization” and the hopes of the world, in his 
judgment,depend. Sam can only reach his ob 
ject through a revolution in the government. 

In proof of this, Mr. M. referred at length, to 
the letter of the Rev. Robt. J. Breckinridge, to 
the Commonwealth. There was in Mr. M.’s 
judgment, an awful significance in that letter. 
It threw out in distinct outline, the dark shadow 
of coming events. The writer was a man of 
great genius. As the representative of the re 
ligious element,he scorned to wear a mask, and 
wrote over his own proper signature. What¬ 
ever emanated from that source, Mr. M. thought 
on many accounts, was worthy of the most at 
tentive consideration. Mr. Breckinridge, after 
asserting that the nationality of America is to 
be sustained, her Protestant civilization to be 
perpetuated, and her Federal Union to be pre¬ 
served, by destroying the foreign and Catholic 
influence, which he considers as in a great 
measure now controlling our government and 
politics, proceeds in the following ominous lan¬ 
guage. “There is but one possible method of 
dealing with the subject. The organized power 
of society must be taken out of the hands of 
those who have betrayed their vast interests, 
and must be put into the hands of those who 


will cherish them. Public opinion, rs the only 
instrument by which the great change can be 
effected. The first, step of the revolution is po¬ 
litical; the second is legal. The first step in¬ 
volves the organization, and the triumph of a 
party commensurate with the country—‘ The 
American party”—and that involves the over¬ 
throw of every party that resists its ultimate 
objects, or resists the necessary means of attain¬ 
ing these objects. Indeed, if this step were fully 
achieved, it would be of less consequence to 
take a second one; since laws, though bad, are 
endurable, and society is safe, as soon as it has 
finally put out of power, allvien and parties hos 
tile to nationality , to our Protestant civilization, 
and to our Federal Union; out of power with an 
overthrow incapable of being repaired. And this 
is the reason why this great movement excites 
such excruciating bitterness of hate, in its polit¬ 
ical aspect, on the pait of all against whom it is 
directed. Its success is seen to be a finality and 
a fatality to them, tfoc.” This language, and the 
ideas thereby conveyed, are most portentously 
distinct. Taken in connection with the charac¬ 
ter of the author, and his vast and controlling 
influence in what he calls “the religious ele¬ 
ment,” in this great movement, they become of 
the most intense importance. Mr. B knows 
very well, said Mr. M., that a party victory in a 
single election, a transient political success, 
would go but little way, in the road lie wishes 
to travel. Mr. B. calls it a revolution. “The 
first step of the revolution, he says, is political; 
the second is legal.” “Our nationality is endan 
gered: our Protestant civilization is endanger 
ed; our Federal Union is endangered; the pres¬ 
ervation of these constitutes our mission on 
earth.” The country, of whose purpose know 
nothingism is the manifestation, has determined 
to surround the great interests with “additional 
safe guards.” They who are opposed to the 
methods proposed of furnishing adequate safe¬ 
guards to nationality, civilization and union, 
“ought, in the judgment of the country,” as Mr. 
B. thinks, and writes, “to be indiscriminately 
crushed.” “We, and our fathers, Mr. B.says, 
have an unsettled account with Popery, many 
centuries old.” It is clear, very clear, that 
the. revolution, aimed at by “young Sam,” and 
in the contemplation of Mr. B., involves the to¬ 
tal repeal of the naturalization laws, and the - 
change of the Constitution of the United States, 
in relation to religious tests as qualification for 
office. It is uncandid in the extreme, in the 
American party and their orders, to endeavor to 
deny or obscure their real objects. Their is 
nothing, else but this legal revolution, which 
discriminates them as a party. “Americans 
shall rule America.” So say I, said Mr. M , so 
says every one. “But who are Americans.”— 
By our Constitution and laws, persons of a cer¬ 
tain color born in the United States, and others 
“naturalized” bylaw, are citizens and Ameri¬ 
cans. They do rule America, and for some 
seventy years, have ruled it more peacefully 
and prosperously, than any other people ever 




t. f. Marshall’s speech. 


3 



were ruled, for the same lonja^tli of time, in an¬ 
cient or modern times, of which we have any 
record. Mr. M. here went into a rapid sketch 
of the history of the Papacy, of the reformation, 
and of the struggles among the rival religions 
in Europe. He contended that our immediate 
ancestors, had suffered nothing from Papal op¬ 
pressions. The rival sects, the offspring of the 
reformation, had alternately persecuted each 
other, as they had alternately conquered, had 
held political power at home. The Churchman 
persecuted the Puritan, the Puritan and Presby¬ 
terian persecuted the Churchman; and both had 
persecuted the Catholics. New England, Mary¬ 
land, and Virginia, were settled principally by 
exiles and refugees from religious intolerance in 
England. The tolerant spirit of the gospel, the 
true genius of Christianity, which is universal 
charity, the principle of Luther, the true princi 
pie of the reformation, never had practical life, 
till it was established here in our republic, and 
by those institutions which young Sam seeks to 
overthrow. Mr. M. elaborated this part of his 
subject to an extent, and with a variety of illus¬ 
trations through- which we cannot pretend to 
follow him in this hasty sketch. He said that 
the body politic, the grand corporation which 
was styled the U. S. of America, was the only 
state of society of men ever known, which as a 
government had no religion. 

The Hindoo, Persian, Jew, Egyptian, Greek, 
Roman, Barbarian had all their religious estab¬ 
lishments, with their oiders of priesthood exist¬ 
ing by law, and sustained by the power of the 
State. Christianity, too, after it triumphed over 
paganism, and had sustained terrific persecu 
tions, from the Homan Emperor, formed a po¬ 
litical alliance and became a part of the imperial 
establishment. We know the result. The refor¬ 
mation of the sixteenth century did not cure the 
evil. The three great divisions of the reformed 
church, the Lutheran or German under the con¬ 
fession of Augsburg, the Calvinistic with the 
Presbyterian model of government, and the pe¬ 
culiar system of dogmas tortured from the wri¬ 
tings of St. Paul by the French Reformer, and 
the Episcopal church of England, each sought a 
political establishment in the several countries 
where they obtained. Each considered itself 
as peculiarly entrusted with the cause of Al¬ 
mighty God, and dealt with Catholics, heretics, 
and dissenters from what the dominant party 
called orthodoxy, as though clothed with infi¬ 
nite judgment in divine things, and with the 
mission of infinite vengeance for speculative 
errors, sins of opinion. Luther, perhaps the 
greatest personage, who appeared in the church 
after its founder, was far, very far in advance of 
the age in which he lived. He taught the doc¬ 
trines of religious toleration, and practiced what 
he taught. But he was not understood by his 
>®wn times. Men had to be educated to a truth 
so sublimely simple, through centuries of mu¬ 
tual intolerance, suffering and blood. It was 
reserved for the founders of this republic to 
^proclaim and to establish the great truth, that 


political government had nothing to do with 
speculative opinions, religious dogmas, or forms 
of ecclesiastical polity. Of-these matters the 
law “knows nothing ” The Bible is the only 
standard of religious truth. Each individual 
man is interpreter for himself. He needs no 
priest or mediator, but Christ in Heaven and 
God is the only judge and avenger of sin. Polit¬ 
ical government guards life, liberty, and proper¬ 
ty. It takes cognizance of human action, only 
as it effects others, in some one of these rights. 
It restrains the liberty of no man, only where 
such liberty trenches upon the equal rights of 
another. It interferes with opinion not at all 
upon any subject; least of all in religion. That 
is an affair between the individual man and his 
Maker. 

,To a free Bible, a free Press, a free Pulpit, and 
a system of religious belief and discipline ab¬ 
solutely voluntary and free without restraint or 
interference, our law has entrusted the truth. 
Orthodoxy is an affair for the preachers not for 
statesmen. The preacher is the advocate, the 
individual is the judge. The law takes no part. 
Argument is the only coercion iu this world. 
No torture; no civil disability is allowed. The 
convincing reasonings of fire, or social degrada¬ 
tion, or political disfranchisement, are repealed 
here, and it was hoped forever. Penalties for 
heresies in opinion, for speculative errors, are 
referred to the power who formed the human 
mind, and who alone can judge it with perfect 
knowledge and perfect righteousness. 

The Catholic religion in this country is a per¬ 
fectly Voluntary system. The Priesthood of 
that communion have no means here of enforc¬ 
ing this system, or punishing disobedience or 
disbelief. The Catholic may stay away from 
the confessional, as the protestant may from 
preaching, there is no law or magistrate to make 
him afraid. Right or wrong, this is our sys¬ 
tem. In my judgment, said Mr. M., it bears 
the impress of consummate wisdom. Young 
Sain, however, judges differently. He affects to 
be afraid of the temporal power of the Pope. 
Mr. M. went into the history of Italy after the 
grants of territory made by Pepin and Charle- 
mange to the Bishop of Rome, from which date 
that ecclesiastic appears in ihe two fold charac¬ 
ter, of an Italian Prince, and the spiritual head 
of Christendom. Mr. M. alleged, that the tem¬ 
poral power or political authority was never ac¬ 
knowledged by any State or people out of his 
own dominions, never, not in the times of Greg¬ 
ory, or Innocent, or Boniface. As a Temporal 
Prince, the Pope treated, negotiated, fought.— 
He formed alliances or waged war with Catholic 
States and Princes within the Peninsula or be 
yond the Alps on terms of perfect political 
equality No citizen of Venice or Florence, no 
subject of Milan or Naples during the middle 
age, and after Italian Avars and politics became 
interwoven with those of the transalpine na¬ 
tions, as part of the general history of Europe, 
no Frenchman, German, Englishman, or Span¬ 
iard, though all Catholic, ever dreamed that he 




4 


t. f. Marshall’s speech. 


owed allegiance to the Tope, as a temporal rnon 
arch, or was bound to his holiness by any tie, 
that interferred with his duty to his own gov¬ 
ernment, or made it sacrilege, 1o bear arms a- 
gaiust the Pope in war. Charles V., the great¬ 
est Catholic Monarch of his day, the most de¬ 
voted to the spiritual claims and jurisdiction of 
the Pope, the most decided and dangerous ene¬ 
my to Luther and the reformation, after endea¬ 
voring in vain, by a long and subtle course of 
negotiation, in the sixteenth century, to draw 
the Pope into an alliance against France, declar¬ 
ed war against him, sent an Imperial army of 
German, Italian, and Spanish Catholics, com¬ 
manded by a Catholic Prince, Charles Bourbon, 
against the Holy City itself. It was taken and 
sacked with merciless ferocity—the Pope him¬ 
self taken captive, and confined, till the Emper¬ 
or extorted such an alliance, and such guar¬ 
antees as pleased the victor. The temporal 
power of the Pope in the nineteenth century is 
indeed a ghost wherewith to frighten the North 
American Republic. Sam is indeed scared, tim 
id youth, at shadows—shadows thrown by no 
substance in existence, either now or in the 
past, shadows the new creation of his own 
fears, or the inventions of his wit to frighten 
others, as malicious boys scare babies, with 
stories of raw heads and bloody bones. Perse¬ 
cution, Mr. M. said, was ever found to multiply 
the persecuted sect, unless you exterminated 
them. Leave the Catholics, said Mr. M., where 
the constitution left them, or treat them, as the 
inquisition in Spain and the Papal States in 
Italy, treated Heretics—burn them, and burn 
them all. Mr. M. said that it was mere trifl'ng 
in Sam to say that to exclude a man from office 
or honor in a free State, to place a whole class of 
native citizens in a rank below others, on ac¬ 
count of their religion, was not persecution on 
account of religion, was not an abridgement of 
his religious liberty. Sara says in one of his 
resolves, that he does not mean to interfere with 
the rights of conscience or religious belief.— 
The Catholics may worship God, after their own 
fashion, but he will degrade them for it below 
the condition of free citizens. He will place 
them in the caste of mulattos, free negroes, and 
Indians. Sam had as well say, that he might 
imprison or burn for religious opinions and the 
victims might still believe as they pleased. Gal- 
lileo when thrown into the dungeon, still enjoy¬ 
ed philosophic freedom—he still believed that 
the earth revolved. Huss, when expiring in the 
flames at Constance, and Servetus, at Geneva, 
enjoyed their religious belief and shouted and 
proclaimed it as though triumphing in death. 
An “American Party,” should be ashamed of 
such wretched and shuffliug sophistry. Shift 
the shoe to the other foot. Gore the other ox 
and Sam will shift his arguments in a trice—he 
will roar you out religious and civil liberty, loud 
as a young lion when roused from his jurgle by 
the spear of the hunter. Indeed he tells you 
now, that for a Catholic man to hold office in 
this country, is an infraction of his Protestant 


liberty. What would he say—ye gods! what 
would he say, if the Catholics were actually 
banded together, as he seeks to band the Pro¬ 
testant sects together against them, for the avow¬ 
ed purpose of excluding all American Protest¬ 
ants from office and all native Americans not 
Catholics from suffrage, as being inclined natur¬ 
ally to Protestantism. Let Catholics and for¬ 
eigners, treat Sam, as he is actually trying to 
use them, and you would hear the cry of perse¬ 
cution raised lustily. He would attest Heaven 
and earth, he would rush to arms in defence. 
The badge, the universal badge of Anglo Saxon 
freedom, the rights of representation, would be 
torn from Sam only with his life. This right if 
extinguished, would be extinguished only in his 
blood. 

In relation to the naturalization laws, Mr. M. 
observed, that there was undoubtedly just cause 
of complaint for abuse and frauds practiced 
under them. The true spirit of those laws was 
evaded, and their real object defeated in very 
many instances by theii defective execution, 
growing, as he thought, mainly out of the de¬ 
fective mode of proof of the preliminary facts as 
provided by the laws themselves. In this par¬ 
ticular he was and had long been in favor of 
their amendment. 

The intention of those laws, was that no 
alien should be admitted to the rights of citi¬ 
zenship, or take the oath of abjuration and al¬ 
legiance, till lie had actually resided within the 
limits of the United States, or some of her terri 
tories, five years. Moreover, such alien must 
have declared his purpose to become a citizen 
three years before his admission to take the 
oath. In point of fact, according to the present 
mode of executing the laws, and the mode of 
proof under them, aliens are in very many in¬ 
stances admitted, who have not been in the 
country six months. He thought that these 
evils and abuses could be completely corrected, 
and the naturalization law’s enforced according 
to their real intent, by revision and amendment. 
He thought the object could be effected by 
means of offices of Registry in which all aliens 
coming into the country should be compelled 
to enter their names, with the date of their arri¬ 
val, and the further provision that a certified 
copy of such entry under the seal of the office, 
should be filed in a court, either district or cir¬ 
cuit, of the United States or some of her territo¬ 
ries, at the time when the party makes his dec¬ 
laration of intention to become a citizen, and 
that both the declaration and entry should be 
recorded in a Federal Court. That when three 
years thereafter the party should apply for ad¬ 
mission to take the oaths, the certified copy of 
the date of his registration and his previous 
declaration of his intention to become a citizen, 
from the office of record, should alone be receiv¬ 
ed as evidence of either fact. It would be a 
matter of no great difficulty to prevent the im¬ 
portation or landing upon our shores of paupers 
and felons, without touching the real objects 




t. f. marshall’s speech. 


n 


and spirit of the the naturalization laws as 
they stand. 

The object of the k. n secret association, is to 
repeal the naturalization laws altogether, and 
to admit none but natives to the elective fran¬ 
chise, and to exclude even natives if they be 
Catholics from every office under Government: 
“Americans and Protestant Americans by birth 
shall alone rule Americans.” The Pharisaic 
Philadelphia Platform announces as its third 
great cardinal principle, “The maintenance of 
the Union as the paramount political good,” 
and by way of corollary from or exemplification 
of the principle, “Obedience to the constitution 
of the United States as the supreme law of the 
land, sacredly obligatory upon all its parts and 
members; and steadfast resistance to the spirit of 
innovation upon its principles, however specious 
the pretexts.” This lip-service to the Union and 
the constitution is exceedingly fashionable, and 
marvellously cheap and easy. The Abolition¬ 
ist, when he takes his seat in Congress, swears 
to observe the Constitution and maintain the 
Union. The nullifier does the same. Your 
man from Massachusetts, who is both abolition¬ 
ist and nullifier swears to Sam’s doctrine. We 
must go a little farther than these general decla¬ 
rations, even when backed by oaths, before we 
can know whom to trust with the Union and 
the Constitution. Sam avows “steadfast re¬ 
sistance to the spirit of innovation upon the 
principles of the Constitution, however specious 
the pretexts.” This is Sam’s text. One of the 
principles of the Constitution is that“no reli¬ 
gious test shall ever be required as a qualifica¬ 
tion to any office of public trust under the U- 
nited States.” Sam has sworn upon the holy 
evangelists, to exclude all men of the Catholic 
religion, whether citizens by birth or naturali 
zation, from every office of public trust under 
government. This is young Samuel’s commen¬ 
tary and proof of his “steadfast resistance to in¬ 
novation upon the principles of the Constitution” 
upon any “pretext, however specious.” The 
Constitution declares that Congress shall have 
power to establish an uniform rule of naturali 
zation, and further, that “the citizens of each 
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States. 

There is abuudaut evidence Irom the high¬ 
est and most indisputable sources, that if 
Sam is notable to repeal the laws of naturali¬ 
zation established by the national legislature in 
pursuance of the constitution, he means wher¬ 
ever he has the power, by State laws or consti¬ 
tutions, to repeal the naturalization laws, and 
set up by State authority different tests of citi¬ 
zenship from chose established by Congress, 
producing thereby a beautiful uniformity on 
this subject. The source from whence I draw 
my proof of this latter proposition (said Mr. 
M.,) is no less high and indisputable than the 
official efforts of the Hon. Garrett Davis, of 
Bourbon, backed with all the powers of argu¬ 
ment and eloquence of which that gentleman is 
so conspicuous a master. The resolutions 


which he offered when a member of the conven¬ 
tion, which formed the new constitution of 
Kentucky, and the speeches which he made in 
support of them, are now before me. Mr. Da¬ 
vis, in fixing or attempting to fix the rights cf 
citizenship, and the qualifications of voters, un¬ 
der the new constitution, sought to confine them 
in Kentucky, as to persons of foreign birth: 
1st. To such as at the time of the adoption of 
the amended constitution should be naturalized 
citizens of the United States. 2d. To such as 
at the time of the adoption of the amended con¬ 
stitution, should have declared their purpose to 
become citizens of the United States, in con 
formity to the laws thereof, and who shall have 
become citizens. 3d. Those who, twenty one 
years previously thereto, shall have declared their 
purpose, according to the existing provisions of 
the laws of the United States, to become citi¬ 
zens thereof; and who then shall be citizens of 
the U. S., Ac. The true meaning of the 3d 
provision is perhaps not perfectly clear. It is 
differently interpreted by different readers.— 
Some persons consider, that it was Mr. Davis’ 
intention through all time, to confer the right 
of suffrage upon foreigners born, who had de 
claied their purpose to become citizens of the 
U. S. twenty-one years previously to their ap¬ 
plication to vote, and who should be actually 
citizens at the time of the election at which such 
application should be made. Such persons con¬ 
sider the words “previously thereto,” to mean 
previously to any election which might be held 
in Kentucky, at any distance of time from the 
adoption of the amended constitution, while 
that constitution remained in force. To him it 
appeared (said Mr. M.,) that the plain gram¬ 
matical construction, taking all the clauses to¬ 
gether, is that the word “thereto” refers to the 
adoption of the amended constitution—no oth¬ 
er point, of time is referred to or named in any 
of the clauses. The first clause begins “those 
who at the time of the adopt ion of this amended 
constit ution,” &c. The second clause commen¬ 
ces with the same words—and the third pro¬ 
ceeds immediately without any other phrase or 
reference, “Those who, twenty one years pre¬ 
viously thereto, <fcc.” Previously to what? To 
the adoption of the amended constitution, un¬ 
doubtedly. Whether Mr. Davis meant to coh- 
line the right of suffrage in the case of foreign¬ 
ers born, only to those who were naturalized 
citizens of the United States at the time of the 
adoption of the amended constitution, and who 
had been actual residents of the country and 
declarants of their purpose to become citizens, 
twenty-one years previously thereto, or meant 
that twenty-one years residence and naturaliza¬ 
tion under the laws of the U. S., shall at any 
time confer the r.ght of suffrage, without refer¬ 
ence to the date of the amended constitution, 
was immaterial, Mr. M. said to his statement.— 
In either event, he said it was the purpose of 
the resolutions, to exclude from office and suf¬ 
frage in Kentucky naturalized citizens of the 
United States, who had every other qualifk-a- 



H 


t. f. Marshall’s speech. 


tioti of a citizen of Kentucky but birth. The 
constitution of the United States and the laws 
of Congress in relation to the important subject 
of citizenship, recognize no distinction between 
citizens by birth and citizens by adoption. The 
rules of naturalization must be uniform. The 
language employed, the word used to express 
the act of centering the rights of citizenship 
upon an alien born, whatever those rights may 
be, is singular and exceedingly impressive.— 
The law is said not to convert him into a deni¬ 
zen, or citizen, or to confer any limited or spec¬ 
ified rights upon him, but to naturalize him.— 
Such is the transcendaut power intended to be 
conferred upon Congress, that the law passed 
in pursuance of it, is supposed to abolish the 
fact of foreign birth, and to stand in the place 
of nativity. The new born republican is regen¬ 
erated by an act of paramount and all sovereign 
grace. In the language of the Theologians, he 
is born again. Now these naturalization laws 
require only five years residence. Mr. Davis’ 
resolution requires twenty-one, and therefore in 
Kentucky render null and imperative the law of 
the United States. 

Mr. M. here paid a glowing compliment to 
Mr. D.’s talents, firmness, and purity. He 
avowed in the most emphatic terms, his perfect 
accordance with the general views of that gen¬ 
tleman, in relation to social organization and 
fundamental law, as maintained by him in the 
convention. He could never sufficiently admire 
or laud the political heroism and self-sacrificing 
zeal with which he had thrown himself alone 
into the wide breach made by the convention 
in what Mr. M. held with Mr. D. to be the true 
principles of constitutional freedom, and oppo¬ 
sed himself singly to a torrent which had pro¬ 
ved irresistible. 

If there had ever been personal unkindness 
between them, it was long since healed and 
obliterated. Still, in Mr. M’s most decided and 
•deliberate judgment, Mr. Davis' resolutions con¬ 
tained a great radical and mischievous error; 
an error which, if carried into the Legislation 
of the States, was fatal to the constitution and 
the Union upon this point of citizenship. It 
would prove fatal too to Mr. Davis’ own dar¬ 
ling scheme of repealing bv the national au¬ 
thority the naturalization laws. If Sam du¬ 
ring the existence of those laws, can establish 
by State constitution or law a different rule of 
citizenship, within a particular State, how shall 
he say that a State where he is in the minority 
may not disregard his repealing act, and estab¬ 
lish for itself any rule of naturalization tre 
State may see fit? The doctrine in its practi¬ 
cal operation, destroj's in my judgment, said 
Mr. M., the fundamental idea of the republic. 
It annihilates the nationality of the people. It 
falsifies the first words of the Federal constitu¬ 
tion—“We the people of the United States.” 
It abolishes the provision that “the citizens of 
each Siate shall be entitled to all privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States.” 
0>.a the one a. citizen of the United States . 


can never become a citizen of Kentucky, and on 
the other a citizen of Illinois or Michigan is not 
recognized as a citizen of the United States.— 
This is nullification up to the handle. It is the 
resuscitation of the South Carolina doctrine, or 
theory of the government as laid down in her 
ordinance of 1632. The Federal compact, as 
they term our national constitution, will not 
be, under the idea he was considering, an union 
of the people of the several States in such man¬ 
ner as to make them one, but a confederation of 
sovereignties, whose citizens are alien to each 
other and only connected through their several 
State governments. To be a citizen of the 
United States will mean nothing, since each 
and every State in the Union can deprive such 
of every right and franchise which marks citi¬ 
zenship, or makes it valuable. If Mr. Davis 
can declare by his State constitution naturaliz¬ 
ed citizens of the United States forever incapa¬ 
ble of office or of suffrage in Kentucky, because 
they were not born in the United States, he can 
declare with equal right that a citizen of the 
United States born in Ohio or Massachusetts, 
should never vote at the polls or be eligible to 
office in Kentucky. He might declare that a citi¬ 
zen of Virginia, Carolinas, or any slave State, 
upon a residence of two years, might vote in 
Kentucky, but a citizen of any other State mi¬ 
grating to Kentucky should be disfranchised 
forever. The doctrine denationalises us, 
makes each State sovereign upon this subject 
within its borders, and makes the citizens 
of each State aliens to each other. There is no 
such thing as the people of the United States. 

To refute this idea it would seem only neces¬ 
sary to indicate the consequences which flow 
inevitably from it. The confusions which will 
follow this effort to disturb the great principle 
of the constitution, and the laws of the Union 
made in pursuance of it in relation to naturali¬ 
zation, are not confined to Sam’s side of the 
question. If he succeeds in repealing those 
laws, and overthrowing that principle, in pur¬ 
suit of his favorite scheme of nationality, he 
will gain nothing by it, unless he carries and 
retains every State in the Union, an event not 
to be anticipated. His opponents meet him on 
Mr. Davis’ ground of the right of State inter¬ 
ference with the subject. Many distinguished 
men of the democratic party contend that among 
the rights of the States, that to fix the qualifi¬ 
cations of electors or voters for the members of 
the State Legislature and all State officers, is 
unbounded and absolutely unqualified by any 
condition or exception. They say that the con¬ 
stitution of the United States recognises the 
right fully in the 2d section of the 1st Article 
where it fixes the qualifications of electors or 
voters for members of the House of Represen¬ 
tatives in Congress. It is in these words: “the 
electors in each State shall have the qualifica¬ 
tions requisite for electors ot the most numer¬ 
ous branch of the State Legislature.” As the 
Federal constitution no wheie undertakes to fix 
or define the qualifications of voters for any offi 




T. F. MARSHALL’S SPEECH. 


cers in the State government, the argument is 
that the whole matter is left to the unrestrained 
discretion of the State laws. If this be so, it 
is evident that a State, or any number of States, 
rnay have any number of citizens, who are them¬ 
selves not citizens of the United States, not 
covered by the flag or entitled to the protection 
of the United States government either in peace 
or war, not entitled to the rights or immunities 
of citizens in any other State, foreigners and 
aliens according to the law of nations, and the 
constitution and laws of the United States, and 
if taken in arms in the service of the United 
States, against the Prince or Government in 
whose allegiance they were born, liable to be 
hanged for treason, yet authorized by virtue of 
State laws to vote for members of Congress 
and President of the United States. Officers 
whose power extend far beyond the limits of 
any parliculrr State; powers which bind for 
good or for evil the whole people of the United 
States, and challenge the obedience of the entire 
republic. 

It matters not, said Mr. M., whether the ar¬ 
gument upon which this right is claimed by its 
advocates be well or ill founded. Should the 
naturalization laws be repealed, this right will 
be practically exercised in many States. The 
new States, the Territories of the United States 
not yet organized into States, will be crowded 
with men of foreign birth; the repeal of the 
naturalization laws, will disfranchise almost the 
entire inhabitants, at least a large majority in 
some sections of the United States. All such 
will frame their own rules of naturalization, 
and will fix their own qualifications for elec¬ 
tors. The scheme will rend the constitution to 
shreds and tatters. Sam’s purpose to revolu¬ 
tionize the domestic policy of the United States 
upon this subject is ridiculous, unless he in 
tends to make it uniform. Has the young gen¬ 
tleman bethought him of the means by which 
he is to enforce his system? He might find it 
easy enough to crush a few insurrectionary 
ebullitions of Irish turnpikers, but when he 
comes to grapple with powerful and organized 
comra''nities, States asserting their sovereign 
powers under the constitution, know-nothing 
mobs will not answer the purpose. Sam must 
put on armor of another sort and temper. Sam 
feels the difficulties of his situation, and con¬ 
tends stoutly that the laws of naturalization 
must be uniform. That if he repeals them, they 
must be repealed everywhere. He avers that a 
State cannot naturalize a foreigner, but in the 
same breath maintains that a State can disfran¬ 
chise or unnaturalize a citizen. Sam is incon¬ 
sistent. The Democrat, argues that his position 
is in favor of liberty, and extends a right which 
the national laws are bound by the constitution 
but refuse to provide for, but that Sam by his 
doctrine of State interference deprives a citizen 
of a franchise actually conferred by the national 
authority. There seems to be at least more of 
liberality, more of the generous spirit of Ameri¬ 
can freedom in the democratic position. I dis¬ 


t 

agree entirely, and protest most solemnly 
against either doctrine. Differing in object, 
they are the same in principle (said Mr. M.l— 
.Nominated by no convention, representing no 
particular body of men, no one has the right to 
complain of me. My own nominee, and repre¬ 
senting my own ideas, I am free to follow 
wherever my own free reasoning may lead.— 
Sam, if he obtains a majority in both Houses of 
Congress and makes a President who will sign 
the bill, has, in my judgment, a legal right un¬ 
der the constitution to pass an act repealing all 
the naturalization laws—and thereafter no one 
of foreign birth, not naturalized at the time of 
the passage of the act, can become an Ameri¬ 
can citizen, and none but American citizens 
can constitutionally have a voice in selecting 
an American President, or an American Con¬ 
gress. A State cannot pass an act of naturali¬ 
zation. 

Perhaps said Mr. M., a comparison of the ar¬ 
ticles of confederation upon this subject with 
the provision of the federal constitution, and a 
reference to the cotemporaneous exposition of 
the latter given by the ablest men of that day or 
of any day, may elucidate this matter, and 
place it beyond cavil or dispute. The fourth of 
the Articles of confederation provides as fol¬ 
lows: 

“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual 
friendship and intercourse among the people of 
the different States in this Union, the free in~ 
habitants of each of these States, paupers, vag¬ 
abonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, 
shall be entitled to all privileges and immuni¬ 
ties of free citizens in the several States, and the 
people of each State shall have free ingress and 
egress to and from any other State, and 
shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade 
and commerce, tfec.” The federal constitution, 
as we have already seen, (he said,' gives to Con¬ 
gress “the power to establish an uniform rule of 
naturalization throughout the United States,” 
and declares further, that “the citizens of eacn 
State shall be entitled to all privileges and im¬ 
munities of citizens in the several States.” In 
commenting upon this power of “naturaliza¬ 
tion” in No. 4i2of the Federalist, in the close of 
that paper, Mr. Madison uses the following lan 
guage. 

“The dissimilarity in the rules of naturaliza¬ 
tion has long been remarked as a fault in our 
system, and as laying a foundation for intricate 
and delicate questions. In the fourth Article 
of the confederation it is declared here, he said, 
that Mr. Madison quotes verbatim the very ar¬ 
ticle he had just read from the confederation — 
Mr. Madison after quoting the article proceeds: 

“There is a confusion of language here which 
is remarkable. Why the te»ms free inhabitants 
are used in ore part of the article, free citizens 
in another, and people in another, or what was 
meant by superadding to “all privileges and 
immunities of free citizens” the words “all the 
privileges of trade and commerce,” cannot easi¬ 
ly be determined. It seems to be a construction 





8 


t. F. Marshall’s speech. 


scarcely avoidable however, that those who 
come under the denomination of free inhabitants 
of a State, although not citizens of such State, 
are entitled in every other State to all the priv¬ 
ileges of free citizens of the latter; that is to 
greater privileges than they may be entitled to 
in their own States, so that it maybe in the 
power of a particular State, or rai her every State 
is laid under a necessity, not only to confer the 
rights of citizenship in other States upon any 
whom it may admit to such rights Within itself, 
but upon any whom it may allow to become in¬ 
habitants within its jurisdiction. But were an 
exposition of the term “ inhabitants” to be ad¬ 
mitted which would confine the stipulated priv¬ 
ileges to citizens alone, the difficulty is dimin¬ 
ished only, not removed. The very improper 
power would still be retained by each State, of 
naturalizing aliens in every other Siate ; In one 
State, residence for a short term confers all the 
rights of citizenship; in another, qualifications 
of greater importance are required. An alien 
therefore legally incapacitated for certain rights 
in the latter, may by previous residence only in 
the former, elude his incapacity; and thus the 
law of one State be preposterously rendered 
paramount to the law of another, within the ju¬ 
risdiction of the other. We owe it. to mere cas¬ 
ualty, that very serious embarrassments on this 
subject have been hitherto escaped. By the 
laws of several States, certain descriptions of 
aliens, who had rendered themselves obnoxious, 
were laid under interdicts inconsistent, not only 
with the rights of citizenship, but with the 
privileges of residence. What would have been 
the consequence, if such persons, by residence 
or otherwise, had acquired the character of citi¬ 
zens under the laws of another State, and then 
asserted their rights as such, both to residence 
and citizenship, within the State proscribing 
them? Whatever the legal consequences might 
have been, other consequences would probably 
have resulted of too serious a nature not to be 
provided against. The new constitution has 
accordingly with great propriety made provis¬ 
ion against them, and all others proceeding 
from the defect of the confederation on this 
head, by authorizing the general government to 
establish an uniform rule of “naturalization 
throughout the United States.” Nothing can 
be clearer than this. Before the adoption of the 
present constitution of the United States, each 
State had the right under the first articles of 
confederation to pass their own naturalization 
laws, which of course were varient in the differ¬ 
ent States—this, coupled with the provision 
that the inhabitants or citizens of each State had 
the right of citizens in other States, produced 
the confusion so admirably delineated by Mr. 
Madison. To remedy which the Federal consti¬ 
tution gave exclusive power over the subject to 
the general government. The doctrine Mr. M. 
was combating would bring back all the confu¬ 
sion the constitution designed to obviate. If 
Illinois or Michigan, for instance, should confer 
Upon a free inhabitant, an alien born, and not 


naturalized by the law of the United Statesythe 
right of citizenship in Illinois, if such an one 
should remove to Kentucky, What would become 
of the provision “That the citizens of each 
State shall be entitled to all privileges,” &c .— 
Thereisa different rule in Kentucky. An alien 
born can have no right of citizenship here. The 
constitution would be broken up, he said. 

But in the 32d No. of the Federalist, Alexan¬ 
der Hamilton wrote thus: “An entire consolida¬ 
tion of the States into one complete national 
sovereignty, would imply an entire subordina¬ 
tion of the parts; and whatever power might re¬ 
main in them, would be altogether dependent 
on the general will. Butas the plan of the con¬ 
vention aims only at a partial union or consoli¬ 
dation, the State governments will clearly retain 
all the rights of sovereignty which they before 
had, and which are not by that act (the Federal 
constitution) exclusively delegated to the Union. 
This exclusive delegation, or rather this aliena¬ 
tion of sovereignty, will only exist in three ca¬ 
ses: 1st. Where the constitution in express 
terms grants an exclusive authority to the 
Union. 2nd. Where it grants in one instance, 
an authority to the Union, and in another pro¬ 
hibits the States from exercising the like au¬ 
thority. 3d. Where it grants an authority to 
the Union, to which a similar authority in the 
States would be absolutely and totally contra¬ 
dictory and repugnant.” After giving exam¬ 
ples of the two first c*-\scr put of exclusive au¬ 
thority granted to the Union, Mr. Hamilton 
proceeds: “The third will be found in that 
clause which declares that Congress shall have 
power to establish an uniform rule of natural¬ 
ization throughout the United States. This 
must cert ainly be exclusive”, he adds, “because 
if each Stale had power to prescribe a distinct 
rule, there could be no uniform rule”. In the 
80th number of the Federalist it is observed: 
“It may be esteemed the basis of the Union, 
that, the cit izens of each State shall be entitled 
to all the privileges and immunities of the sev¬ 
eral States.” From the reason of the thin«r. 
and from these highest of all authorities, it is 
evident, that, this power is exclusively vested in 
the Union, and that the rule of naturalization 
must be uniform throughout all the States, or 
the Union is broken up at the basis. Nor does 
Ibis reasoning,conclusive as it is, at all conflict 
with the right of a State to fix the qualifications 
of electors or voters within its limits. The 
qualification when ascertained, must apply 
equally to all cit izens of the United States. No 
citizen of the United States, (and in this re¬ 
spect, nor indeed in any respect, is there any 
distinction between the native and the natural¬ 
ized; having the legal qualifications can be 
proscribed on account of the place of bis birth. 
Nor on the other band, can any power short of 
the Union, Americanize an alien. In this way, 
and in this way alone, can the constitution be 
observed, and an uniform rule be established or 
preserved. In the quotation made from Mr. 
Madison, the power is shown to have been a 





T. F. MARSHALL’S SPEECH. 


9 


necessary one. Unless it had been exerted, the ex¬ 
isting confusions could not have been remedied. 
It is just as necessary now. If it be abandoned 
—if the national laws be repealed—the State 
governments will, from the necessities of their 
situation, and the nature of their population, 
be compelled to take it up. When the general 
government abdicates, or fails to exercise ne 
cessary powers, usurpation upon the part of 
the States is the inevitable, theabsolutely neces¬ 
sary cousequence. 

Mr. Marshall said that the Federal Constitu¬ 
tion designed evidently that none but American 
citizens should rule America. Its purpose was 
equally clear not to confine the rights of citizen¬ 
ship to those born in the United States. The 
high power of converting an alien into a citizen, 
of Americanizing a stranger by birth, was con¬ 
ferred exclusively upon the General Govern 
ment. An act nationalizing an individual, in¬ 
vesting him with rights which the Constitution 
compels, in express terms, every State to re¬ 
spect, must needs be performed by the national 
government. No State could bind all the oth¬ 
ers by any separate act of its own. I have 
shown sufficiently, said Mr. M., the confusion, 
which would inevitably follow—the unavoida¬ 
ble breaches which would be made in other 
parts of the Constitution, if the several States 
should set up separate and different rules of 
naturalization. The effort of Illinois or Michi¬ 
gan to admit persons, alien by the laws of the 
United States, to the rights of citizenship, and 
that made by Mr. Davis in Kentucky to exclude 
American citizens in Kentucky from franchises 
which they must needs carry with them every¬ 
where, to obliterate by a State act the stamp of 
nationality impressed upon them by the laws 
of the Union, are kindred errors, alike at war 
with the language of the Constitution, the con¬ 
struction given to it by its wisest interpreters, 
the whole genius of our system, and the true 
idea of American nationality. 

The right of expatriation—the right of a hu¬ 
man being to throw off the involuntary and op¬ 
pressive obligations imposed by the accident of 
birth within a particular jurisdiction, to shift 
his residence from one part of the globe to an¬ 
other, and by the spontaneous act of a full 
grown man to choose his country, is one of 
those American ideas, which our fathers meant 
to establish and make practical by the institu¬ 
tions which they founded. The light to shift 
your allegiance is denied by the common laws 
of England. Nemo potest cxuerc palriam —no 
one can throw off his country—is a maxim of 
that jurisprudence. A subject of the crown, is 
one born within the King’s legiance. Once a 
subject always a subject, is the principle of the 
British law. The doctrine of the American 
Constitution is different. Descended from men, 
who themselves had fled from oppression, the 
men of '76 completed the act of expatriation, 
by a declaration of independence and a forcible 
revolution. They framed a government upon 
which they conferred the power, to convert 
2 


aliens born into citizens, and to impose upon 
them exclusive and absolute allegiance, with 
the corelative duty of protection upon the part 
of the government, the common law to the 
contrary notwithstanding. In possession of a 
vast extent of fertile and unsettled land, the 
American fathers did not intend to close their 
door against further immigration. In tire rel¬ 
ative circumstances of the old and the new 
world, as to population and territory, they had 
sense enough to know that nature would press 
with irresistable force against any bar that ar 
tificial policy might attempt to raise. They 
sought not therefore to separate themselves 
from the human race—to surround themselves 
with an ocean of Are—to throw an impassable 
gulf between a republic so situated, and the en • 
slaved and suffering population of other coun 
tries. Considering such a policy to be as im¬ 
possible in execution, as it was merciless in de¬ 
sign, they flung wide their gates. The influx 
of population from abroad was a fact impossi¬ 
ble to prevent. How to deal with it was a practi - 
cal question which they had to settle in their 
fundamental policy —and they did settle it by 
the fearless application of those principles, 
which in their declaration they had proclaimed 
to be the birth right of mankind. 

They believed with a deep and living faith 
in those principles. They had trusted then- 
cause to them, they had founded their institu 
tions upon them. 

That political government among men, de 
rives its just powers from the consent of the 
governed, was one of their axioms. They did 
not condescend to prove it by logic—they an¬ 
nounced it as a truth self-evident to human 
reason, an essential element of human right , 
an indisputable postulate of freedom. From 
this they deduced their principle of represents 
tion in its largest sense. 

The power claimed by the British parliament 
to tax the colonies, was as every one knows, 
the question which brought on the war of the 
revolution. The ground upon which the colo 
nies denied the power was, that they were not 
represented in that parliament. They asserted 
the principle retrospectively, and contended 
that the colonies had always been independent 
of the British Legislature, and such was the 
historical fact. In its grand extension, it em 
braces and distinctly recognizes the eternal 
truth, the basis of all liberty, that no legis¬ 
lation can justly bind, unless the subject of it 
consent to the law by himself or his represen¬ 
tative. The principle is cardinal.it is absolute 
ly inseparable from the American idea of civil 
liberty. Tear it away, and the idea, and the 
fact—the principle and the liberty are gone. 

From a profound policy then, as well as an 
enlarged benevolence (things which the truly 
wise have ever held to be identical) they tho't 
it safer as well as more humane to impart to the 
stranger all the blessings of freedom which 
themselves enjoyed. An alien by birth, they 
: determined to make him a citizen by adoption. 




T. F. MARSHALL’S SPEECH. 


aO 

and to Laud him to the country of his choice, 
by the strong cords of gratitude and affec¬ 
tion, as well as interest. They did not think it 
either wise or safe, to have a large number of 
foreigners always foreigners, in the bosom of a 
republic, always in full view of the most per¬ 
fect civil liberty, yet deprived of its enjoyment; 
for liberty is an enjoyment as well as a right. 
To them it would be no republic. Excluded 
from office and from honor, with no voice in the 
councils, no power to hold real estate, no repre¬ 
sentation in the legislature of such rights as 
might remain to them, in what do persons thus 
situated differ from the subjects of an absolute 
despotism? They do differ in one, and that a 
most material circumstance. 

Under the absolute government of a single 
person, whose will is the sole law, all below 
him are at least equal. It is some comfort to a 
man, if he be a slave, at least to feel and know 
that it is the common lot. The subjects of a 
single master are peers in servitude. Of all the 
forms of oppression, the most unbearable to hu¬ 
man thought, yet the most irresponsible, in¬ 
solent and irresistible, is the tyranny of an ex¬ 
clusively privileged class. Reason and experi¬ 
ence, fact and theory, speculation and practice, 
agree in this, that the tyranny of caste over 
caste, is the most corrupting to those above, the 
most crushing and intolerable to the heart and 
soul of those below, of any of the corrupting 
and crushing forms of tyranny heretofore 
known among men. 

Our ancestors, therefore, did not mean to di¬ 
vide American society into horizontal strata, 
by a boundary line of religion and of blood, 
with those who had happened to be born in an¬ 
other part of the earth, and those of the Catho¬ 
lic religion, no matter where born, (these being 
of a faith so accursed that not even American 
birth and education could purify the taint,) safe¬ 
ly stowed away below, while the favorites of 
heaven, the protestants elect, securely seated 
on top, booted, spurred and mounted on the 
backs of the degraded class, might rule and ride 
a dominant and regnant party, armed with the 
exclusive rights of office and of suffrage—in oth¬ 
er words, with power absolute and irresistable, 
save by arms. 

They believed that a republic, founded upon 
the most perfect equality of rights among those 
subjected to its laws and government, was not 
only the most just and free, the most productive 
of happiness and improvement, the best calcula¬ 
ted to develop the faculties, intellectual and 
moral, the most favorable to science and to vir¬ 
tue, but also that it was the most permanent 
and secure, whether from external force or from 
internal disorder. They believed in liberty sin¬ 
cerely, devoutly, without hypocrisy or doubt, 
as the fountain of all good things, as that which 
gives to the individual dignity and courage, to 
tiie State strength and grandeur, safety and per¬ 
manence. Without it, in their judgment, there 
von Id be no patriotism, no love of country. 

A State which reposes in the honest love of its 


citizens, a love founded in the private interest 
which each individual has in its preservation, is 
safer without revenue or arms, surrounded by a 
rampart of hearts, thau an oppressive, unjust 
and unequal government, with all the guards 
and garrisons, the bayonets and fortresses which 
money, wrung bv force from an unwilling and 
enslaved people, can build or buy. 

Make the foreigner a citizen, and he enters 
upon the practical enjoyment of ail the rights 
of other men. He is incorporated with the State, 
and feels himsell a part of it. He loves it as 
his country in peace, he defends it with honor 
in war. Keep him a foreigner, and he hates 
you, a 3 all those of a degraded caste loathe what 
is above them. He is a domestic enemy ripe 
for revolution. If your enemy be his former 
| master, and he fights for you in war, he fights 
with a halter round his neck. Captivity dooms 
him to the death of a felon. Your flag is not 
his flag, it does not cover him. In a land of 
liberty he is a slave. In the home of his choice 
he is a stranger. In peace lie has no civil rights. 
In war no hopes of honor. 

Without representation, our ancestors believ¬ 
ed that there could be no civil liberty—without 
an entire, total and permanent separation of the 
ecclesiastical State from the political, of the 
church from the civil government, of religion 
from the temporal power of the priest, no mat 
ter of what faith, and his dogmas, from the 
laws and the magistracy, there could be no re¬ 
ligious liberty. 

Our ancestors were not heathen or infidels.— 
Devoted and Christian men, they believed that 
in founding a State without a religion, and in 
establishing perfect toleration, they were in fact 
establishing Christianity, and providing for the 
purity of the church and the extension of the 
gospel, according to its own free genius and 
the precepts of its founder. My kingdom is not 
of this world, He said; and again when speak¬ 
ing of the Jewish laws against adultery. He 
said, Whoso looketh upon a woman to lust after 
her hath already committed adultery in his 
heart. It is to the heart and will that Chris¬ 
tianity addresses itself, and seeks to reform hu¬ 
man nature and purify human action by cleans¬ 
ing it at the fountain. When the church, in vi¬ 
olation of the commands of its master, sought 
“to lift its mitred front” among the princes of 
the earth, and becoming a political establish¬ 
ment, aimed to extend and enforce the faith by 
compulsory regulation, the Almighty averted 
his face and his support far from it. 

Never yet has Christianity leanedj’upon the 
arm of human government and force for sup 
port, that it has not been tainted and defiled by 
the alliance. Engaged in the struggle for wealth 
and power, embroiled in the passions and tur¬ 
moil of earthly strife and mundane politics, the 
church abdicating her office, abandons her trust.. 
1 and finally quits the conflict, with her holy 
vestments stained and polluted, her divine 
lineaments erased, and her just and appropriate 
influence overthrown. 





t. f. Marshall’s speech. 


12 


The political weaknevss of ihechurch, consti¬ 
tutes its moral strength and grandeur. 

Seeking no participation in the temporal pow¬ 
er, coveting not the treasures of this world, she 
comes with a more commanding voice to soothe 
the passions in which she does rot share, to 
arbitrate m the strifes to which she is no party. 

When our constitutions bar the ministers of 
gospel from political power, they do not seek 
eo much to preserve the liberty of the State, as 
the proper dignity and purity of the church. 

I perceive, gentlemen, said Mr. M., that lam 
in the midst of the order of “know nothings.” 
You call yourselves “the American party.”— 
You have built a platform which you are pleas¬ 
ed to call national. There is nothing national 
in it, nothing peculiar, nothing which distin¬ 
guishes you from other parties or other persons, 
but the two principles of religious persecution, 
and the denial of the right of expatriation.— 
These ideas are revolutionary and anit-Ameri¬ 
can. You seek to overthrow toleration, natu¬ 
ralization, and political equality among citizens, 
to tear away the threads which run like a fine 
tissue of gold through the whole web of our 
system, strings which are twisted with the very 
heart and life of our republic. 

You say that you do not mean to interfere 
with the rights of conscience or any man’s relig¬ 
ious liberty, yet you make out a case against 
the Catholic which declares him necessarily an 
enemy of the State, the sworn subject of a for¬ 
eign Prince, a domestic traitor whose oath of al¬ 
legiance to the State is a perjury, whose real 
master is the enemy of all human freedom, who 
is flooding this country with whole armies of 
priests and jesuits, who wait but his orders and 
the coming hour of strength to overthrow the 
republic. You do not mean to persecute the 
Catholic, yet you charge him with designs and 
crimes against the State, springing necessarily 
from the nature of his religion, which would 
justify any extremity of violence, which would 
render his expulsion or extermination a wise, 
humane and necessary policy. There has been 
a time when the cry of popery and “popish 
plots” would lash the Anglo-Saxon mind to 
murder and to madness. Those days are long 
gone by even in England. The British govern¬ 
ment has expunged in the nineteenth century 
her persecuting statues. She has passed her 
Catholic emancipation act. The United States 
will not rest, assured she will not clothe her 
young and buoyant limbs with the cast off vest¬ 
ments of which even monarchy has grown asha¬ 
med. Every well informed man knows that the 
tie between the Catholic laity or priesthood, 
and the Pope as spiritual head of the church, is 
not political. Every well informed man knows, 
that outside of the Papal States in Italy, no 
Catholic owes any allegiance to the Pope as a 
temporal Prince or Potentate. He is at this time 
held on his throne by a foreign hand. He is 
protected against his own subjects by 8000 
French bayonets. 

Nobody in America is a afraid of the Pope 


You say that the Catholic and the citizen of 
foreign birth are necessarily abolitionists. The 
history of parties will not bear out the asser¬ 
tion. Is the legislature of Massachusetts com¬ 
posed of men of foreign birth? Are the sixty- 
three preachers, members of that assembly. 
Catholic Priests? Natives and Protestants ev¬ 
ery dog of them. Yet they have nullified the 
fugitive slave law. They are know-nothings 
also. They wish to proscribe the Catholic and 
the foreigner. With these men, the abolition of 
slavery is “the great idea” of the nineteenth 
century. They believe that to be the institu 
tion which chiefly endangers “our nationality, 
our Protestant civilization, our federal Union.” 
How happens it, that they should proscribe the 
Catholic and the naturalized citizen, if that 
class are with them in their great and para 
mount object? The fact is otherwise, and the 
history of parties proves it to be otherwise. 

The whig party, under that name, exists no 
longer. The world however will see, rest assu 
red they will, in “Young Sam” nothing but a 
renewal of the old struggle for power, under a 
new name, and with new and dangerous pnnci 
pies. The true crime of the Catholics and the 
naturalized citizens, is not that they seek to 
bring over to this country either the forms or the 
substance of despotism, either civil or religious. 
It is that they are too democratic. It is that 
they have defeated the whigs in their reiterated 
efforts to make a President and to control the 
government. Let the truth be told though the 
sky should fall. That party threw overboard 
such men as Webster and Fillmore. It was 
said that General Scott inclined to the Catholic 
religion. It was said that he had educated his 
daughters in a convent, that he had made an 
American army in Mexico kneel before a pro 
cession of Priests, at the elevation of the host. 
He was nominated by a whig convention. The 
whig papers hurled their anathemas at General 
Pierce and New Hampshire, because that State 
had proscribed Catholics by law. Gen. Scott 
was beaten. The overthrow was terrible.— 
Curse the Catholics, ihey would not vote for a 
quasi Catholic candidate, when you offered 
him, and henceforth they should not be allowed 
to vote at all. It is the democratic party, not 
the Pope, which you hate and dread. The Con 
stitution and the laws of the republic, hereto 
fore deemed fundamental, do not work to please 
a defeated party, and they, following the beaten 
path of baffled factions, seek to change them» 

Your new organization, gentlemen, seems 
to be strong and to contain many elements 
of popular strength. Its novelty, the charm 
of secrecy so well calculated to attract 
young and thoughtless aien, the name of 
“American party,” the cry of “Americans 
shall rule America,” so gratifying to native 
pride, the promise of a dominant caste, so 
alluring to the tyrannic love of dominion, 
which, say what we will, forms at least an es¬ 
sential elerbent of human nature, the invitation 
to all the Protestant sects t-c unite in a crusade 



12 


T. F. MARSHALL’S SPEECH. 


o 033 239 VIS » 

Vs 


against a church, feeble and defenceless here, 
and odious, justly odious, to the Protestant— 
all these things seem ominous of success. The 
cry of abolitionism, too, against the wretched 
foreigner invited here by the generosity of our 
subsisting laws, is a word of fire in the South. 
Sam sings a different tune in the North. There 
he is himself abolitionist, but still denounces 
the Catholic and Che foreigner. He remembers 
Polk, he remembers that accursed acquisition of 
all the slave Territory which lies South of the 
compromise line of 36: 30, the annexation of 
Texas, for which although rent from a Catho- 
olic power, the accursed papist and the foreign¬ 
er still voted. He remembers the Mexican war, 
in which, though waged against the same Cath¬ 
olic power from which Texas had been ravished, 
these {accursed Catholics, the temporal subjects 
of the Pope, against their allegiance and the 
will and the interest of their real master, rush¬ 
ed by thousands to aid a Protestant Republic in 
conquering and ravaging a thoroughly Catho¬ 
lic State. Sam North, remembers the protective 
tariff so important to his gains, so dear to his 
avarice, and that these same Catholics and for¬ 
eigners, aided to their uttermost, the hateful 
slave States and the democrats to put it down. 
Sam adapts his music skilfully to the different 
tastes of his various audiences, but it is still 
the dirge to Catholics and foreigners. Although 
the worst and the most powerful passions of 
the human mind are appealed to with tremen¬ 
dous emphasis, mark my words, it will not at 
all do. Many of Sam’s sworn soldiers will fall 
off from him. He may muster from the Protes¬ 
tant churches a small a very small corps of ig¬ 
norant fanatics, really frightened with the ghost 
of the Papacy, and a few bloody bigots, anx¬ 
ious for the game of persecution, but the enlight¬ 
ened Christian clergy, understanding well the 
history of the church, and deeply imbued with 
the spirit of their master, will scorn the aid of 
the temporal power, and refuse to lean upon 
the secular arm for support to religion. The 
Bible and liberty, a free press and a free pulpit, 
are all they ask for the diffusion of the Gospel. 
If Sam succeeds, however, which may Heaven 
avert, he will convert the Catholic, native as 
well as foreigner, into a deadly and dangerous 


enemy of the Republic, planted in the very 
bowels of the State. I mean not to threaten; 
God forbid; but men have been known to fight 
long and hard, and against desperate odds for 
their religion and their franchises. It is in vain 
for Sam to say that he means not to disturb the 
vested rights conferred by naturalization, or to 
interfere forcibly with the Catholic mode of 
worship or their dogmas. The Catholics and 
the present naturalized foreigners, know very 
well, that it is hatred, deadly hatred of them, 
which has caused the new political organiza 
tion. They see a political platform, in which 
there is no politics. War, commerce, negotia¬ 
tion, everything that has been heretofore consid¬ 
ered as appertaining to policy, either foreign or 
domestic, pretermitted. Hatred to them seems 
the only principle of the new party. Men. I 
say have been known to fight for their religion 
and their franchises. John Huss was an obscure 
professor in a Germany University. The Em¬ 
peror Sigismund when he burnt him at Con¬ 
stance, little dreamed that from the ashes of the 
friendless martyr there would rise the flames of 
a war in Bohemia which would shake the Aus¬ 
trian powerand desolate Germany through long 
years of suffering and of blood. If the perse¬ 
cuting temper of the sixteenth century is to be 
renewed here, if American Protestantism so far 
forgets its genius and its mission, as to aid in 
rekindling the religious wars of that terrible 
period in quest of vengeance for the gone cen 
turies of wrong, Religion will suffer most. True 
Christianity will veil her face and seek the shade 
till better times. Men will be divided between 
a sullen and sordid fanaticism on the one side, 
and a scoffing infidelity on the other. Our na¬ 
tional characteristics will be lost. American 
civilization will have changed its character.— 
Our Federal Union will have sacrificed its dis¬ 
tinctive traits, and we shall have exhibited a 
failure in the principles with which our govern¬ 
ment commenced its career, at which Hell itself 
might exult in triumph. 

I have heard Mr. Marshall several times since 
this report commenced and have endeavored to 
incorporate the substance of all he has said. 

A NATIVE PROTESTANT 


XENTUCKY STATESMAN PRINT- 







